Memory of Murder

“Good man-good cop. He tells me you’ve got a case you think might be connected with this one?” The suppressed excitement in the old detective’s voice came over the line, loud and clear.

“Maybe,” Alan said cautiously. “Uh…you have any objections to my recording this call? Make it easier to go back over things.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Alan poked buttons, put the call on speaker, then said, “Okay, we’re on. I’m looking for-” What could he say? A double homicide? But it hadn’t been that, had it? “Might have been missing persons, probable homicide-young couple, maybe mid-twenties, early thirties at the most. Would have happened around the first of September, 1969.”

“Time’s right.” Faulkner was silent for a moment. “So’s the age. And it’s interesting, you know, you calling it a ’probable’ homicide. We had it as a missing persons case for a while, but I always did figure they was dead, leaving their kid behind like that.”

Alan’s scalp prickled. “They had a child?”

“Little boy. About five years old when they disappeared. They’d left the kid with a neighbor and went out to dinner and a movie. It was the neighbor called the police when they didn’t show up to collect the boy. Wasn’t until the next day they found the couple’s car in a downtown parking lot. Not a trace of the two of them, then or since.” Faulkner made a tsking sound. “Shame. Nice kids. Really nice. That’s what made it so hard, I think.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“James and Karen McKinney. Lord, sometimes I think I know those names better’n I know my own kids’. Squeaky-clean-I mean really. Not a thing in their past history, no debts, no vices, no enemies-hell, they hadn’t been in town long enough to make enemies. They’d just moved here-came from someplace up in northern Pennsylvania, one of those dying coal-mining towns, you know? High school sweethearts-she was as pretty as a picture, and he was good-looking, too. They got married right outa high school and she got pregnant right off the bat, but they didn’t let it hold ’em back. Nah, they were going places, those two. She went to work so he could go to college while her mother watched after the baby. Then her mom passed away about the time he graduated, and he got a job down here. Teaching-yeah, he was a damn schoolteacher, you believe that? Or woulda been. He was set to start the new job when school started, woulda been right after Labor Day, that’s the way they did, back then. Way I always figured it, those two kids were out celebrating their last free weekend before the new job, the new school year started. And…poof. They just…disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“People don’t just disappear,” Alan said. “You must have an idea, some kind of theory what might have happened.”

There was another long pause. “Most everybody thought it was probably a random thing-some psycho, you know?-and those kids just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Most everybody. But you don’t think so.”

“Didn’t feel right to me-I don’t know why. Well, for one thing, usually with those kinds of things, the bodies turn up sooner or later. Or else there’s more killings. This was just too clean. Struck me as being…professional.”

“Professional. As in…a hit?”

“I know, I know. The question is, why?” Another pause. “You wanna know what I think? If it was a hit, then somebody got it wrong, that’s all.”

“You mean-” Alan felt a sudden chill.

“Yeah. I think the reason those two kids got whacked, somebody made a mistake, got the wrong people. It was just a case of mistaken identity.”

Alan didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He felt queasy-physically sick.

“Yeah…I always did think it was kind of funny, because according to the landlord, the couple that had the apartment before the McKinneys moved in, seems they’d done a midnight flit-skedaddled in the middle of the night, left owing a month’s rent. Woulda made sense, if they knew there was a contract out on them. Thing is, I looked into them, too. Nothing.” After a moment Faulkner cleared his throat. “So, am I getting this right? Your dad says you think Karen McKinney might be alive? After all these years…”

There was a break in the old man’s voice, and it struck Alan that Faulkner had spoken of the couple-the McKinneys-as if they were people he’d known personally and well. As maybe he had, he thought, maybe better than those who’d called themselves neighbors and friends of the couple, even family. He’d studied every detail of their personalities, their lives, had lived with them inside his head for years, even decades. They probably were as close to him as members of his own family.

“Too soon to tell,” he said gently, not wanting to get the guy’s hopes up in case the Jane Doe pulled out of the Chesapeake turned out to be unrelated to the Baltimore case. “Can you fax me whatever photos you have of Karen McKinney?”

“Sure can. I’ll send you the whole damn file, soon as I get somebody to drive me to the post office. I don’t drive in the city these days-too damn dangerous.”

“Thanks,” Alan said. “I do appreciate it.”

“One more thing you should know.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Remember I said it had been quite a few years since I’d looked at those files? Well, last time was…oh, maybe ten, fifteen years ago. Somebody else was looking into the case-came to see me in person, in fact.”

“Really.” Alan’s spine had straightened involuntarily.

Faulkner chuckled. “That got your attention, didn’t it? Yeah, fella was a private dick out of Atlanta. I’ve got his name right here, but I don’t think he’s in Atlanta anymore. I think he moved out west somewhere. But if he’s still licensed, you ought to be able to locate him easily enough. P.I.’s name was Holt Kincaid. Said he was James and Karen McKinney’s son.”

Alan didn’t have to look to know his partner had swiveled back to his computer and was already typing in the name. By the time he’d given Faulkner his fax number and the address where he could send the McKinney files, finished his goodbyes and signed off, Carl was sitting back, staring intently at his monitor screen.

“What’ve you got?”

Carl flicked him a glance. “Would you believe your P.I. lives in L.A. now? On Laurel Canyon. But that’s not all.”

Alan was on his feet, looking over the other man’s shoulder. Carl tapped the screen. “Take a look. Could be a coincidence, I guess.”

“You know what I think about coincidences,” Alan muttered, then read aloud from the information on the screen. “Date of birth…November…1964.” He shot Carl a look, but didn’t point out the obvious. A moment later, he straightened up, one hand clamped to the top of his head. “Sonofa-” he whispered.

The full name given on the application form was James Holt Kincaid.

Jimmy?

Lindsey had been for a long run in Mission Bay Park that morning. She’d been doing a lot of running the whole past week, but today being Saturday, she’d decided to push herself. She was in the shower cooling off when she heard her doorbell ring, and because she wasn’t expecting anyone, for a while she tried to ignore it. But obviously, whoever it was didn’t seem inclined to give up. The ringing went on and on, sounding more and more insistent.

Finally, she swore, shut off the water, wrapped a towel around her head and shrugged into a short terry cloth robe. “Coming! I’m coming, already,” she hollered, tying the robe’s belt as she stomped angrily and barefooted down the stairs. In the entryway she took a quick look through the peephole. Then, as her insides performed what she knew to be physically impossible feats-her stomach dropped, her heart turned over, etc.-she looked again. And with shaking hands, unlocked and opened the door.

“Alan-uh, Detective Cameron,” she managed to say, then stood clutching the collar of her robe and mopping self-consciously at her wet face with it, while her visitor pulled off his sunglasses and moved past her. He was dressed casually, in cargo pants and short-sleeved knit shirt with a collar, but in spite of that she could see he was in full cop mode, judging from the way he came into her house as if he had every right to be there.

“Right the first time,” Alan said, with a brusque cheeriness she immediately recognized as false. His curious gaze swept over his surroundings, taking in the stairway, landing and high-vaulted ceiling. When she didn’t respond